Trump faces backlash after saluting North Korean general

Donald Trump is facing some heat Thursday afterhe went against presidential norms by saluting a North Korean general.

“I’m not trying to be gratuitous or unfair but isn’t saluting a General from an enemy military sort of a big deal?” tweeted Sen. Brian Schatz (D-Hawaii).

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North Korea's state news channel on Thursday was the first to broadcast a 42-minute video from Trump’s meeting this week with Kim Jong Un. In a clip shared by the BBC, Trump is shown meeting various North Korean officials, including a North Korean military general.

The general first salutes Trump, to which the president salutes back, before shaking his hand. Kim is seen smiling in the background.

“To no one’s surprise, North Korea used our President for their propaganda campaign," tweeted Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.), calling it "nauseating" to see the salute after Trump had just bashed traditional U.S. allies days earlier over trade disputes at a G-7 meeting.

White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders defended the action Thursday afternoon, calling it “a common courtesy,“ adding that “when a military official from another government salutes ... you return that.”

To no one’s surprise, North Korea used our President for their propaganda campaign. Kim Jong Un is pocketing immediate concessions and not making any concrete commitments. Nauseating to see Trump stiff our allies in Canada and then praise Kim while saluting his generals. https://t.co/IOrIMO3yxs

However, military and intelligence experts noted Thursday that U.S. presidents typically do not salute military officials from adversarial nations. Washington and Pyongyang have no formal diplomatic relationship, and North Korea is still technically at war with South Korea, a key U.S. ally.

Retired Maj. Gen. Paul Eaton, in a statement for the veterans-focused advocacy group VoteVets.org, called Trump’s salute “wholly inappropriate."

The Trump administration must talk with North Korea, he said, "for the sake of avoiding a disastrous war. But they have not earned the salute of a president.”

“There's a protocol for military salutes," tweeted Mieke Eoyang, a former intelligence-focused Hill staffer, who's now with the center-left think tank Third Way. "They're given to friendly foreign militaries. But w/DPRK, we are still in a state of war, so a salute is improper,” she added, referencing Pyongyang's preferred name for North Korea, the Democratic People's Republic of Korea.

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Human rights activists — and the U.S. government — have also admonished the North Korean regime for its long record of detaining and punishing thousands of people in prison camps.

Eaton in his statement said Pyongyang was responsible for "a regime of terror, murder and unspeakable horror against its own people."

Still, some conservative pundits quickly came to Trump's defense.

Jack Posobiec, a prominent Trump promoter on Twitter, tweeted photos of President Barack Obama giving a thumbs-up to the Cuban military and “giving a bro shake” to then-Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez.

Indeed, conservatives lambasted Obama several times early in his presidency when he bowed to two foreign leaders.

First, Obama faced blowback in 2009 after he bowed to Emperor Akihito during his first visit to Japan. Conservatives said the move displayed weakness from the U.S. on the world stage.

Obama was also criticized later that year for bowing to King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia.

Trump in 2012 tweeted about Obama’s interaction with Abdullah: “do we still want a President who bows to Saudis and lets OPEC rip us off?”

On Thursday, many on the left pointed to these incidents as evidence that Obama faced a double standard, and that conservatives are hypocritical for defending Trump's salute.

However, Ned Price, an Obama-era White House official and CIA analyst who left government work shortly after Trump's inauguration, argued that these situations shouldn't be compared. A president should always know the proper protocol when interacting with foreign military officials, he said.

“We can be outraged that Trump saluted a North Korean general without invoking the ‘if Obama did it‘ argument," Price wrote on Twitter. "Here's the truth: Neither Obama nor any other American President would've done this. Like so much else today, it's uniquely Trumpian and abhorrent."